Her Secret Fantasy

by Gaelen Foley

  She turned another page and stopped.

  Knight, Major D.

  Gathering up her courage, she swallowed hard and opened his file. She did not know what sort of horrible thing she had been half expecting, but as her gaze traveled swiftly over the few pages collected, a quick account of his impressive military career and his various family connections, her eyes filled with tears.

  Because it all matched exactly what he’d told her.

  There were no lies here.

  Even the story of his and Gabriel’s battle against the royal guards at the maharajah’s palace was there, unvarnished. The only thing he hadn’t told her was just how steep the odds had been against him and his brother, which in turn led her to see what a very deadly warrior he must be when he was in his element. She blinked away her tears, smiling from her very heart, for she never would have thought of accusing Derek Knight of too much modesty.

  Preparing to put the “K–L” folio away, she turned back to the first file and smoothed the pages to make sure it all looked neat and undisturbed, and it was then that the large sums of money noted on the entry under her hand drew her attention.

  What is this? She narrowed her gaze and started more closely scanning the pages under Kane, Phillip. As the moments passed, her initial curiosity turned to rising disbelief. The file kept an account of enormous sums of money that had been paid out incrementally month after month to a firm called Warwickshire Canals & Co. The total came to more than 300,000 pounds.

  Several letters from a Mr. Phillip Kane, President, described in long, tedious detail the progress being made on this extensive and apparently very ill-fated construction project. A quick glimpse at Mr. Kane’s correspondence recounted an endless litany of problems that had come up along the way in the building of these canals—a flood, a spike in the cost of timber, a key engineer who dropped dead of a bad heart.

  Lily shook her head, entirely taken aback to learn that Edward had engaged in this sort of long-odds speculation.

  She knew he was experienced in matters of trade, but still, three hundred thousand pounds!

  Not even the profligate Regent could snap his fingers at that kind of sum. She was obviously no expert in finance, but she could not imagine why or how Edward could have sunk such a fortune into these dubious canals and still have a roof over his head. A large roof, at that.

  As she turned another page, she came down to the final entry, dated almost exactly one year ago—and winced, for there was nothing whatsoever to show for Edward’s investment, nor much of an explanation from company president Phillip Kane.

  The payments had simply stopped.

  Hmm. She knew one thing for certain: Derek would want to see this.

  All of a sudden, the sound of heavy, clomping footfalls in the corridor outside the office broke into her thoughts.

  Lily looked up with a low gasp.

  She froze, still holding the Phillip Kane papers. Someone was coming! The color drained from her face. Edward! A grouchy bellow to a servant removed any doubt who it was. He had come home!

  In the blink of an eye, Lily folded the Kane papers and shoved them into the bodice of her neatly tailored riding habit. Scrambling to put the “K–L” folio back in its proper place, she closed the safe, locked the door, pulled down the false front of the books, and ran to the desk to put the key back under the tray of drying sand.

  Then she whirled around, scanning the office with her heart in her throat, making sure everything else was in order. But how was she going to get out of here? There was only one door, no other exit, no place to hide.

  She might be able to jump out one of the windows, but she realized there was no time to try. He would be upon her in an instant. Every second, the footsteps grew louder. Dear God, having discovered his theft, his treason, stealing from the Crown, Lily knew Edward might kill her if she did not think of something fast. She’d had no idea she was getting into something so far over her head.

  Abruptly remembering that she had locked the door, she raced over and unlocked it to avoid raising Edward’s suspicions when he walked in. Meanwhile, she concluded in a flash that her only hope of getting out of this unscathed was to fall back on the one strategy that, with years of practice, had become her forte.

  She would put on her frostiest mask and hide in plain view.

  When he opened the door, she was sitting on his desk in a pretty pose, her arms braced behind her, her legs crossed, the impatient swing of her top foot stirring the brown drapery of her riding habit.

  She gave him an arch look when he hesitated in the doorway, his groggy and ill-tempered look turning to obvious bafflement to see her. “Lily!”

  “So,” she clipped out. “There you are. At last.”

  He cleared his throat a tad guiltily at her tone of wifely reproach. “What are you, er, doing here, my dear?”

  “Waiting for you, of course!” she retorted with a chilly smile.

  “Oh. Did you, uh, miss me?”

  “Not in the least.”

  He cleared his throat and came slouching into the room, shutting the door behind him.

  “Did you have fun on your business trip? Really, Edward. I am disappointed in you.”

  “How did you find out?” he mumbled, his head down.

  “Word travels fast in the ton. But I had to see you for myself to confirm that these rumors were true. Well. It seems I have my answer. I shall be going now.” She jumped off his desk and strode past him, making her way to the door with her nose in the air.

  “Aw, Lily—don’t go storming off.” He reached out and grabbed her arm, halting her forward motion.

  Damn! She had just missed making a clean getaway! She flicked a quelling glance down at the beefy fingers grasping her elbow. “Let go of my arm. You’re going to give me a bruise.” It took all her effort to maintain her high-handed façade, but she knew her ladylike aura of aristocratic frost was her best weapon in helping to keep his baser nature in check. Still, as her fear deepened, the disguise was wearing thin.

  “Come, we don’t get much chance to be alone,” he wheedled her. “Stay and chat.”

  “I can’t. I have to go.” She pulled away in disgust, but he would not release her.

  “Don’t I get a kiss good-bye, at least?”

  “Absolutely not.” He leaned closer, and she grimaced at the smell. “You need a bath.”

  “Maybe you should join me.”

  “Edward! How dare you?” She let out a sudden gasp with astonished understanding. “You’re still drunk!”

  “Nay! Well, maybe just a bit!” His wheezing laughter confirmed her suspicions. “Give me one kiss and I’ll let you go home,” he teased, but a glint of lust had sparked to life in his eyes.

  I’ve got to get out of here. This was getting extremely dangerous.

  “Look at you, my haughty princess. I’m so pleased you came to see me. I think you really want to stay.” Without warning, he slung his other arm around her waist and bent lower, inhaling the scent of her. “So lovely. Admit it, Lady Lily. You picked me for a reason. All the fine, lordly gentl’men you could’ve had. I think you fancy a bit o’ the rough.”

  “How dare you speak to me in such a disgusting fashion?” She tried to shove his arms off her waist, but his bearlike embrace only tightened. “God, you are so impossibly crude.”

  “Yes, but I’m exactly what you need. Come, Lily, my angel, just one kiss.”

  “I really do not feel like kissing you right now, Edward,” she announced, struggling to keep her cool air well in hand. “You lied to me and you smell like a tavern floor.”

  “Aw, surely all my gold is worth that much to you, at least.”

  “You are behaving like a thoroughgoing boor!”

  “One proper kiss and you can go. Come, I know you’ve got more fire in you than you gave me before. I can smell it in your blood.”

  She looked at him evenly, though inside, she was quaking—and revolted. But if this was what it was going to take to get h
er out of here in one piece, so be it. “Just be quick about it,” she muttered, bracing herself as he leaned toward her.

  “Ah!” In the next moment, his rough and slobbery kiss was upon her, rather like a pack of rabid hounds. He was stale and sweaty and he smelled like a dirty washrag, and if she were not so expert at controlling her reactions, Lily would have screamed, or at the very least gagged at the incursion of his tongue in her mouth and the wretched taste of his recent overindulgence. “Very nice,” Edward rasped after a moment, but instead of releasing her, he came right back for more.

  As he began groping her, Lily was shocked at his aggressiveness and tried to squirm free. He ignored her protest as she tried to push him away, but when he squeezed her breast, they both stopped short at the sound of crinkling paper.

  Her eyes widened.

  Edward pulled back a small space and looked at her in confusion.

  Her face suddenly gone ashen, Lily panicked, pulling out of his grasp and launching herself toward the door, but Edward grabbed her arm and yanked her back to him with a booming yell. “What are you hiding?”

  “Nothing! Let go of me!”

  With a wrench of her shoulder, he spun her to face him. “What are you really doing here?”

  “I already told you—”

  “Don’t lie to me!”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

  “Oh, really?” He reached out and cupped her breast in rough insolence, his hand discovering not just yielding female flesh, but the rigid square of folded paper tucked inside the neat white buttoned shirt of her riding habit.

  His eyes burned with fury when he looked at her again. “Damn you!”

  “Edward—” She cried out as he grabbed the edges of her bodice in both meaty hands and ripped it open with a violent tear.

  Lily instinctively tried to cover herself, but he had no interest in her body at the moment. He snatched the Phillip Kane papers out of the top of her chemise above her stays. Holding her in place against the wall with one hand clamped around her throat, Edward shook the folds of paper loose and saw what she had stolen.

  Slowly, he turned to her in shock. “You lying little bitch.” He threw her away from him, sending her tumbling onto the floor in a heap of brown skirts and ripped broadcloth, her hair falling from its tidy chignon.

  He loomed over her. Lily cowered on the floor, trying to protect herself and hold her ripped bodice together at the same time.

  “You barge in here and try to pretend that I’m the one who’s caught for a bit of fun at a tavern? But you! You’re the one who’s caught, my haughty lady.” He grabbed her by her hair and wrenched her head back, leaning down to snarl in her face, “You’re goin’ to pay for this.”

  “Edward, please!”

  “Knight put you up to this, didn’t he? Answer me!” he roared. “Are you fucking him?”

  “No!” she screamed.

  “Well, I don’t believe you,” he said quietly after a pause. “You’ve forced me to it, Lily. Now I’m going have to kill ’im.”

  “Edward, no!”

  “Oh, yes. I see it all now. Nobody plays Ed Lundy for a fool. The both of you are going to pay.” He released her roughly and stomped over to the door, throwing it open.

  He bellowed for his henchmen.

  Lily barely had five seconds to think of what to do before he was back, towering over her. For a second, she cowered in fear, expecting that he was going to start kicking her.

  Every time she started to get up, he pushed her down again. “You stay right there, you filthy little fortune hunter. You stay on the floor, where you belong.”

  Lily flinched, and Edward laughed.

  Bates came running and blinked when he saw her. “How the hell did she get in here?”

  “You tell me!” Edward bellowed. “You fools let her pass!”

  More of his thugs rushed into the doorway in answer to their master’s wrathful summons.

  “Jones, Maguire, search the property,” Bates ordered. “Make sure she came alone.”

  “Yes, do,” Edward added in sarcasm. “Incompetents,” he muttered under his breath.

  Lily could no longer hold her tongue. “Edward, there is no need to speak of killing Derek—”

  “You little backstabbing harlot, think you can save your lover by lying to me?”

  “If anything happens to Derek Knight, you’ll be the first person the authorities will want to speak to,” she shot back, thinking fast, “especially after your drunken spree with that rakehell—too much liquor has started many a duel, even between so-called friends. That’s what they’ll think.” Her jaw clenched in determination, Lily climbed warily to her feet, on guard lest he try to knock her down again. Her heart was pounding and her chest heaved as she held her torn bodice together.

  At least now she had his full attention.

  “Then there’s the small matter of Gabriel Knight, Derek’s brother. He’s said to be an even fiercer warrior than Derek is. All those powerful cousins of theirs—the Duke of Hawkscliffe, Lords Winterley, Rackford, Griffith—all of them. Don’t be a fool,” she warned Edward with total conviction. “If you strike him down, they will all come after you. You won’t stand a chance.”

  He considered her words, then shrugged them off with a glower full of stubborn pride. “I’m not afraid of them.” He glanced at Bates. “Ready the others. We’re going after him.”

  “Ill-advised, Edward. Very ill-advised, unless you don’t mind sacrificing a few of your boyhood mates to his sword.” Lily nodded at Bates. “Derek Knight is a warrior with years of combat experience. You really think you and your little army of East End bruisers can take him down?”

  He sent her an unpleasant smile. “We’ll manage.”

  Her desperation climbed as Edward turned away and headed for the door with a curt order for one of his men. “Tie her up and don’t let her out of your sight.”

  “Edward, wait! If you would just calm down, there is another way to get rid of him!”

  He paused, his back to her. He seemed to debate with himself in annoyance, then turned around and looked at her impatiently. “Very well. I’ll bite. How?”

  Lily’s mouth had grown so dry she could barely force the words out. “Capture him, but don’t kill him. Throw him on a ship bound for India. Then he’ll be out of your way and no one can accuse you of murdering anyone.”

  He stared at her, deliberating. “Kidnap him.”

  “Precisely. Anyone who’s ever met the major has heard him say he can hardly wait to go back to India. So, let him. They’ll just assume he got tired of waiting and decided it was time to get back to his troops.”

  Edward approached her once more with a menacing stare. “I have an even better idea. I deposit the two of you in a room at some unsavory hotel, each dead of a gunshot wound to the head. They’ll call it a lovers’ quarrel. Murder-suicide. A very scandalous end for such a fine lady, no?”

  She flinched, but checked the dread that the bloody image inspired. “Frankly, I like my idea better.”

  He narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing her, then he began laughing quietly at her feeble jest and turned away once more. “Let’s go,” he said to his men.

  Her frayed control snapped at the ease with which he ignored her.

  “Edward!” she wrenched out with a sob. Panicked, she rushed after him and grabbed his arm as tears flooded her eyes. “Spare him! I’ll do anything you want!”

  “Well, now.” He turned to her with a sinister leer. “That is an interesting offer, Miss Balfour.”

  Her heart in her throat, her body suddenly gone ice cold, Lily forced herself to hold his gaze.

  “Exactly what are you willing to do?” he asked, mocking her.

  She did not answer.

  “I’ll not marry you.”

  “I know.”

  “On the other hand…” He cupped her chin and tilted her head back, inspecting her face as though she were some wretched Roman slave girl for sale in the s
hadow of the Colosseum. “I daresay I could find a use for ye.”

  His men joined in his jeering laughter.

  “What do you say to that offer, my proud Miss Balfour? Your services as I please for the major’s life?”

  Lily said nothing, but lowered her gaze, turning scarlet. Her lack of outrage at his indecent words was enough, she trusted, to signal her submission to the hideous pact.

  She could feel Edward’s gaze consuming her. “Boys, I’m feeling magnanimous. I think we can spare the major, after all.”

  “Oh, come on, Ed!” Bates protested. “There’s no need to make bargains with the likes of ’er! You can have the wench whether she’s willing or not!”

  Edward cast him a swinish smile. “Not much sport in that, eh?”

  Lily held her breath, fearing her fate, but noting the fleeting look of uncertainty in Edward’s eyes.

  There was lust and violence there, but also, the slightest glimmer of heart. Perhaps he wondered what his mother would have to say about all this. Perhaps a part of him did not want to kill Derek despite his hotheaded first reaction.

  Edward looked away, quick to conceal the glimpse of humanity. “No,” he ordered in a gruff tone. “We’ll put him on the first ship bound for India. No sense tangling with the whole Knight family, like she said. Nor do I fancy a visit from them Bow Street blackguards, either.” He looked at Lily from her head to her feet. “You’d better make this worth my while.”

  “Well, I don’t like it,” Bates grumbled. “Damn lot easier just to kill the bastard. If Knight’s as practiced with a weapon as she claims, then how are we supposed to get close enough to restrain him?”

  Edward glanced at Lily. “He’ll come to her, won’t he, love? Little virgin and the unicorn, eh? You want him to live, you help us take him nice and easy.”

  She cried out in fright as Edward grabbed her arm again and dragged her toward his desk, pushing her down into the chair and then slapping a piece of paper before her along with a quill pen.